A group of Colorado Springs residents are organizing in favor of a move to limit the construction of high-rise structures in the city.
With a petition bearing the words “We Don’t Want to be Denver,” the group is gathering signatures endorsing the proposition that residents should be able to vote to restrict the height of proposed building projects.
The movement is fired by a project announced late last year by the O’Neil Group, an investment and development company based in Colorado Springs, that said it wanted to build a 36-story in the city’s downtown section.
That project, slated to go up on Costilla Street, just to the east of the Olympic and Paralympic Museum, will also feature nearly 500 residential units. In 2021, the O’Neil Group proposed a 25-story structure with 316 units, but ultimately decided that a smaller building would not prove financially feasible.
Opponents of the project have said that what particularly bothers them is that the structure could block views of the nearby Pikes Peak and connecting mountains. Last year the publication CPR News noted that many residents in Colorado Springs embrace the city’s “classic, almost ‘anti-urban’ identity.”
The petition, which is posted on the site Change.org and has so far generated more than 4,900 signatures, also asks that no new building in Colorado Springs should be taller than the 16-floor Wells Fargo building. That structure, at 90 S. Cascade Avenue, was built in 1990 and is to date the tallest building in Colorado Springs.
A decision to put the proposition on this fall’s ballot will have to first be approved by the Colorado Springs City Council. A decision by that body may be made sometime next month.
By Garry Boulard
Image Credit: Courtesy of Unsplash
